I've been sucked into forever living!! Why do I feel like the bad guy?

[KindergartenKop]

Recently an acquaintance emailed me to ask if I could 'help' her by trying a few products and giving her some feedback. Being the nice person I am I agreed. When the bag of samples turned up the penny dropped and i realised that she's trying to sell them to me (I'm naive I know!). I thought id just buy a little bubble bath. Its fucking 14 quid! No way. I'm sending the bag back and pleading eczema. Does this whole company operate by guilting friends and family into purchasing crap quality at ridic prices?

Yes, they are promoted quite a lot in horsey circles.

But what is the actual work they do? Do they just email people? post memes on FB? What else do they do on the park bench?

My FL friend posts before and after pictures of her own belly (which looks no different!)

I just want to say thank you to y'all.

A few days ago I had no pyramid sales in my life. As of 30 minutes ago, I now have Forever Living in my feed, and for that, I THANK YOU.

Sunshine; clearly the photos are always taken at a different angle or in a different 'light' to make it look different; but it never is.

Please, Tiny, get the language right. You are supposed to call the pyramids 'multi-level marketing schemes'. Which look a lot like pyramids.

Incidentally, I googled 'Amway Scam' earlier to find out how my former landlord actually made enough cash to pay his mortgage and buy all his car posters and German porn videos (that's another story). Curiously, most of the Youtube results are people explaining why Amway is NOT a scam, no, not a scam, the products are marvellous and you can achieve your dreams! None of them say how much they have made though.

so, i decided to search the FB to see if I could find a FL page to follow and I found one! full of inspirational status updates! YEESSSSSS

last update: "I'm glad I took the plunge and now the future is exciting...are you ok with the life you live????"

Bliss. Utter bliss

I think lots of them are generic but it would be spooky if it was the same person hellohello

I have an Arbonne 'friend' who persists in inviting me to various parties. Oddly enough my gym classes are always that night...

I don't know how they make a living. Their entire premise seems to be flogging stuff to each other. I don't know anyone else who uses Arbonne.

that MSE thread is enlightening ... monthly subscription for your website? £200 to join? mandatory success days? using your credit card to hire cars or buy nicer clothes?? Feck off! Glad I sidestepped my neighbours attempt to "compare the opportunities" when I mentioned I was thinking about joining Y

(for clarity - Y has no monthly fees, no bonus for sign ups, no mandatory / paid training, I don't work evenings / weekends, I don't drive round making deliveries, and it's £70 to join for a massive box of make up I am still working my way through and that's all I have paid out for )

I don't understand how any of it is sustainable, even the non scammy ones that are just traditional selling stuff. It just seems as though everybody is selling something. Certain groups are full of FL, makeup and scentsy stuff and the natural parenting groups are full of people selling books or phoenix cards. I'm no dissing the non scam/cult ones, I like phoenix cards and every year ish I fill my card drawer from a local seller, the kids have a fair few Usborne books on their shelves. What I don't understand is how anybody can be making much money when there are about 20 sellers for each product within a very small geographical area! Especially the books, it isn't as though you use them and run out and need more. At least if you get someone hooked on a particular brand of make up then they keep coming back for more.

"Mummy please don't go to work to today but it's ok to go on endless courses and evening wineathons with your deluded mates" I'm really beginning to hate this manipulation.

Loving this thread! Thanks for the links to the MSE forums, those discussions are fascinating.

I have a 'friend' from my NCT group who started with FL last year. She has never ever invited me to anything before, I've barely seen her since we all went back to work after maternity leave, but now I get regular messages asking me to meet her for coffee and discuss the business opportunity she has for me. She has a very good job with the NHS, I thought she was an intelligent person but she's fallen into this cult like organisation and it's so exploitative, fishing around people you have the most tenuous links with to draw them in as well.

She has a separate FB page for her 'business'. I ignored the invitation she sent to 'like' it as I definitely don't like it! I can still see it though, and there's not one post on there about the actual health product she is claiming to sell, it's all about recruiting others. And whatever she says about this business becoming the way to spend more time with the children, she is away from hers more than I am from mine because of this as far as I can tell. My 3 day a week job pays more than enough and I get to see my children every evening and 4 whole days a week, so no thanks.

"My FL friend posts before and after pictures of her own belly (which looks no different!)"

Yes, my FL friend did that cleanse thing (whatever it's called) and you really couldn't see any difference - although she'd lost a few pounds (but then she wasn't eating any junk!)

The cleanse thing helps you lose weight because you fast for a few days, then just eat veg or something then just healthy food, all the while drinking the FL gunk.

If you did all that anyway, you'd still lose weight without drinking swamp.

Yep, those 7 day juice things virtually guarantee 7 pounds loss and all you need is fruit and something to whizz it in. Or you could just eat the fruit for the same results

Yep. I don't know why that isn't obvious

I knew a guy at university who did Amway stuff - he kept telling me I'd be a great partner for 'his business' - when I found out it was actually 'flogging washing up liquid' I was dumbfounded. He persuaded my ex to go to one of the conventions and the whole thing sounded totally bizarre and cultish. I still can't quite believe people are getting so worked up and hysterical about household cleaning products but I guess that's the point - creating an aura of hysteria about something so mundane makes you think there must be something in it.

I know bumbley. I saw that Jason guy who does the juicing books on TV demonstrating how to make the various juices recently. The presenter (could have been Schofield) said "why can't I just eat fruit?" and the juice guy said "why don't you?" Probably because it isn't wrapped up in some arcane 'special' diet

My friend did a 'juice cleanse' for a week. By the end of it she'd lost a few pounds, loads more pounds on buying six tonnes of fruit, and was boring on endlessly about the joys of eating clean and not having sugar and the juice giving her an amazing energy surge right away because of the natural plant goodness.

I suggested the energy surge might be more to do with having ingested fruit sugar via six apples, half a pineapple, some strawberries and whatever the fuck else all in one go.

She had to concede that yes, that was possible too.

But at least she didn't buy aloe shite and attribute it to that.

I sometimes do a bit of a juice or fruit cleanse thing if I've overdone it on booze or eating out. I wouldn't do it for more than a few days though as it makes me lightheaded. I certainly wouldn't buy any expensive supplements though, just normal 'ol fruit

Thank you so much for all the comments! I got sucked into this forever living thing a few months ago, and I am so sick of it!! I thought I was the only one seeing through all the robot-like nonsense they talk until l found this thread!! I'll stick with it for the discount but if I had known the pressure put on you to sell to your friends I never would have signed up! They miss that bit out when recruiting!

Chinnchin, its really good to hear from a FL rep. You're the first one to come on the thread and and its interesting that you're not defending it. Thank you.

Thanks Chinchin, can you confirm any of the stuff on the mse thread? Do you have to pay for the "success days" and holidays?and pay for having a website? I have a feeling a friend may be about to be sucked in so want to have as many facts as possible!